Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Just as, in their maps of the world, historians, Sossius Senecio, crowd onto the outermost edges of the tableau the places that elude their knowledge, appending notes such as “beyond this lie waterless sand-dunes full of wild beasts,” or “impenetrable swampland,” or “Scythian frost,” or “an ice-locked sea” — and likewise, as I compose these Parallel Lives, having gone through the periods that are accessible to plausible reasoning and rest on a footing of history dealing with real events, I might well say of the earlier ages: “beyond this lie the marvelous and the fantastic, territory the poets and myth-makers occupy, and it no longer admits of credibility or clarity.”
But since, once I had issued the narrative concerning Lycurgus the legislator paired with Numa the sovereign, it seemed not unreasonable to proceed on up to Romulus as well, now that our history had come close to his times — as I considered the question, in the words of Aeschylus, “Who will be set against him? Who will stand as his match? Who is his equal?” — it appeared to me that the founder of beautiful and celebrated Athens ought to be set opposite, and compared with, the father of unconquered and gloriously famous Rome.
May it be granted us, then, to purge the mythical matter by reason and make it take on the look of history; but wherever it stubbornly disdains plausibility and admits no mixture with the credible, we shall ask for indulgent hearers, who will receive this venture into antiquity with good will.
Theseus, then, seemed to match Romulus in many respects. Both were born without a legitimate father, in secrecy, and won repute as sons of gods; both were warriors, as we all know; and both possessed intelligence together with strength. Of the most illustrious cities, the one founded Rome, the other united Athens into one city; and the abduction of women belongs to each of them.
Neither escaped misfortune in his own household, nor an inborn vengeance that pursued his line, but both, it is said, in the end came into conflict with their own citizens — if there is anything of use for the truth in what is said, in however untragic a fashion.
On his father's side Theseus's lineage goes back to Erechtheus and the first native-born inhabitants of Attica; on his mother's side he was descended from Pelops. For Pelops was the mightiest of the kings of the Peloponnese, not so much through abundance of wealth as through the number of his children, since he gave many daughters in marriage to the best men and sowed many sons as rulers into the cities. One of these, Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the not-large city of Troezen, but won a reputation, above all men of his day, as an eloquent man and the wisest.
The nature and power of that wisdom of his was, it seems, of the sort that made Hesiod especially esteemed for the maxims in his Works. And they say one of these maxims in particular was Pittheus's own: “Let the wage promised to a friend be assured.” This is also attributed to Aristotle the philosopher; and Euripides, by calling Hippolytus “the pupil of holy Pittheus,” shows the reputation Pittheus had.
They say that when Aegeus, wanting children, consulted the oracle, the Pythia gave him the famous response bidding him not to have intercourse with any woman before he came to Athens — though she did not seem to state this altogether clearly. Hence, on his way, he stopped at Troezen and reported to Pittheus the god's utterance, which ran thus: “Loosen not the jutting foot of the wineskin, great chief of the people, until you have come to the land of the Athenians.” Pittheus, evidently understanding this,
persuaded him, or tricked him, into lying with Aethra. When Aegeus, having done so, learned that he had lain with Pittheus's daughter, and suspected that she was pregnant, he left behind a sword and sandals, concealing them beneath a massive boulder that had a cavity within it, sized so as to fit precisely what he had put there.
He told this to Aethra alone, and instructed her that if a son should be born to him and, on reaching manhood, prove able to lift the rock and take up what had been left there, she should send him to Aegeus with these tokens, without anyone knowing, keeping it as secret as possible from everyone — for he greatly feared Pallas's fifty sons, who were scheming against him and looked down on him for lacking children of his own — and so he departed.
When Aethra bore a son, some say he was named Theseus at once, because of the placing of the tokens; others say he received this name later at Athens, when Aegeus formally acknowledged him as his child. Raised by Pittheus, he had as overseer and tutor a man named Connidas, and even now, on the eve of the Theseia each year, the Athenians offer him a ram in sacrifice — a far more fitting tribute of memory and honor than what they pay Silanion and Parrhasius, who did nothing more than paint or sculpt Theseus's image.
It being still the custom in those days for those passing out of boyhood to go to Delphi and offer the god the first-cuttings of their hair, Theseus too went to Delphi — and they say a place there is still called after him the Theseia — and he clipped only the hair at the front of his skull, the same fashion Homer attributes to the Abantes; from him this style of cropping took the name “Theseis.”
It was the Abantes who first wore their hair cropped in this fashion; the reason was not, as some claim, instruction from the Arabians, nor imitation of the Mysians, but because they were warlike and fought at close quarters, and had learned, more than any people, to press into hand-to-hand combat with their enemies, as Archilochus also testifies in these lines:
“Not many bows will then be drawn, nor slings flung thick and fast, when Ares gathers the press of battle on the plain, but there will be the many-groaning work of swords; for of that kind of fighting those men are masters and lords, the spear-famed men of Euboea.”
To deny enemies any grip on their locks, they wore it cropped in this fashion. And Alexander of Macedon, grasping the same principle, is said to have for like reason directed his commanders to shave every Macedonian's beard, since in combat a beard was the easiest thing of all to seize.
For the rest of that time Aethra kept hidden the true origin of Theseus; a story was spread by Pittheus that he had been fathered by Poseidon. For the Troezenians worship Poseidon exceptionally; he is their city's guardian god, to whom they offer the firstfruits of their crops, and they bear the trident as the emblem on their coinage.
But when, still a young man, along with bodily strength he began to show courage and a firm, sensible judgment, Aethra led him to the boulder, revealed to him the true story of his birth, and directed him to retrieve the tokens his father had left there and sail on to Athens.
He crept under the rock and lifted it easily, but he refused to go by sea, though it was safer, and though his grandfather and mother begged him to. For it was a hard thing to travel the road to Athens on foot, since no part of it was free from danger, being infested by robbers and criminals.
For that age had produced men who, in the exploits of their hands, the speed of their feet, and the strength of their bodies, were, it seems, extraordinary and tireless, but who put their natural gifts to no fair or useful purpose; rather they delighted in insolent violence, and enjoyed their power through cruelty and bitterness, through mastering, forcing, and destroying whatever crossed their path, while as for shame, justice, fairness, and humanity — these, they thought, most men praised only out of cowardice in doing wrong and fear of suffering it, things that had nothing to do with those who had the power to take more.
Of these men Heracles cut down and destroyed some as he made his rounds; but others, who escaped his notice as he passed by, cowered, slunk away, and were left to their own petty doings. But when misfortune befell Heracles, and after killing Iphitus he departed to Lydia and served for a long time there as a slave to Omphale, imposing this penalty on himself for the murder, at that time Lydia's affairs were enjoying deep calm and safety; but throughout the districts surrounding Greece the old troubles flared up and spread once more, since no one was there to check or contain them.
The journey on foot to Athens from the Peloponnese was therefore deadly; and as Pittheus described each of these criminals — what sort of man he was and what he did to strangers — he tried to persuade Theseus to travel by sea. But Theseus, it seems, had long been secretly burning with the fame of Heracles's valor, and thought a great deal of him, and listened with the keenest interest to whatever anyone reported about the sort of man he was, above all those who had witnessed him
in action or heard him speak: at that time he was clearly affected exactly as, many years later, Themistocles was affected, when he said that Miltiades's trophy would not let him sleep — in just this way Theseus, in his admiration for the valor of Heracles, had Heracles's deeds as his dreams by night, and by day his zealous rivalry drove him on and spurred him to plan the same exploits himself.
They happened, moreover, to be kinsmen, being cousins. For Aethra was Pittheus's daughter, while Alcmene was the daughter of Lysidice; and Lysidice was Pittheus's own sister, both of them offspring of Pelops and Hippodameia. He therefore found it a hard and intolerable thing that Heracles should go about purging land and sea of wicked men everywhere, while he himself fled from the trials that lay in his own path,
disgracing the father he was said and reputed to have, by traveling to him by sea in flight, and offering as tokens to the man who was in fact his father mere sandals and an unbloodied sword, without displaying at once, through good deeds and actions, a clear mark of his noble birth. It was with such a spirit and such reasoning that he set out, meaning to wrong no one, but to punish those who committed violence against him.
And first, within the borders of Epidaurus, he confronted and slew Periphetes, a man whose chosen weapon was a club — hence his nickname Corynetes, “the Club-bearer” — when this man seized him and tried to block his path. Taken with the club, Theseus kept it afterward as his own, going on using it much as Heracles made use of the lion's hide. To Heracles that skin was a demonstration of the size of the beast he had mastered by wearing it; Theseus, in the same way, showed off the club as a thing defeated by him, though unconquerable in his hands.
At the Isthmus he destroyed Sinis the Pine-Bender by the very method by which Sinis had killed many men, though Theseus had had no practice or training in it, thereby showing that valor surpasses any skill or training whatsoever. Sinis had a daughter, most beautiful and tall, named Perigoune. When her father was killed she fled, and Theseus went about seeking her; she had gone off to a place thick with brushwood, wild asparagus, and rushes, and, quite innocently and like a child, as though these plants could hear her, prayed to them with oaths that, if they saved her and hid her, she would never harm them nor burn them.
When Theseus called out to her, giving his word that he would take good care of her and do her no wrong, she came forward; and after uniting with Theseus she bore Melanippus, and was later given by Theseus in marriage to Deioneus, son of Eurytus of Oechalia. From Melanippus, Theseus's son, was born Ioxus, who joined Ornytus in the colonizing of Caria; hence it became a traditional custom among the Ioxids and Ioxisians never to burn either the thorn of the wild asparagus or the rush, but to hold them in reverence and honor.
The sow of Crommyon, which they called Phaea, was no ordinary beast, but a fierce and difficult creature to overcome. This Theseus, as an extra task on his way, so that it might not seem that he undertook everything only under compulsion, went out of his way to kill — thinking at once that a good man should defend himself against wicked men only when attacked, but should attack and take on the risk against savage beasts even before being attacked. Some say, however, that Phaea was a woman, a murderous and lawless brigand, who lived at Crommyon, and was nicknamed “sow” for her character and way of life, and was later killed by Theseus.
Before reaching the territory of Megara he killed Sciron by hurling him down from the rocks, according to the common account because he robbed travelers who passed by; but according to some, out of arrogance and wantonness he would stretch out his feet to strangers and order them to wash them, and then, as they washed, kick them off into the sea.
But the writers of Megara, going directly against this reputation and, as Simonides says, “waging war against long-established time,” say that Sciron was neither an arrogant man nor a robber, but rather someone who punished robbers, allied by kinship and friendship to men of decency and justice. For Aeacus, so they say, is reckoned the most upright man among the Greeks, and Cychreus of Salamis has divine honors at Athens, and the virtue of Peleus and Telamon is unknown to no one.
Sciron, then, was the son-in-law of Cychreus, the father-in-law of Aeacus, and the grandfather of Peleus and Telamon, born to Endeis, the child of Sciron and Chariclo. It seems improbable, then, that men of the highest character would have entered into kinship with the worst, giving and receiving what is most precious and honored. They say, rather, that Theseus did not kill Sciron on his first journey to Athens, but later, when he took Eleusis from the Megarians who held it, by deceiving their ruler Diocles, and it was then that he killed Sciron. These matters, then, admit of such disputes.
At Eleusis he wrestled down and killed Cercyon the Arcadian; and going on a little further, he killed Damastes, called Procrustes, at Erineus, forcing him to fit his own body to the beds, just as Procrustes had done to strangers. In this he was imitating Heracles. For Heracles too took vengeance on those who plotted against him by the very methods they used against others: he sacrificed Busiris, threw Antaeus in wrestling, overcame Cycnus in one-on-one combat, and dispatched Termerus by crushing his skull.
It is from this, they say, that the phrase “Termerian evil” comes: for Termerus, it seems, used to kill people he met by striking them with his head. In this way, then, Theseus too went about punishing the wicked, making them suffer the very violence with which they had oppressed others, and, in the manner of their own crimes, receiving the justice due to them.
As he went forward and came to the Cephisus, men of the clan of the Phytalidae met him and were the first to greet him, and when he asked to be purified, they cleansed him according to custom, performed rites of propitiation, and entertained him in their home — no one else along the road having shown him any kindness before this. It is said that his descent took place on Cronius's eighth day, the month now known as Hecatombaeon. When he came down into the city, turmoil and division filled public affairs, while the household of Aegeus was privately afflicted with sickness of its own.
For Medea, fleeing from Corinth, had promised Aegeus that she would free him from childlessness by her drugs, and was living with him. She perceived beforehand who Theseus was, though Aegeus did not know, and since he was now an old man and fearful of everything because of the factional strife, she persuaded him to poison the stranger at a feast. So Theseus, coming to the meal, did not think it right to declare who he was first; instead, wishing to give Aegeus an occasion to discover it himself, when the meats were set before him he drew his sword as though to cut the meat with it, and showed it to Aegeus.
Aegeus, recognizing it at once, dashed the poisoned cup to the ground; then, questioning his son, he threw his arms around him, gathered the citizens, and presented him to them, and they welcomed him gladly for his valor. It is said that the spot where the poison spilled when the cup fell down is now the enclosed precinct in the Delphinium, since Aegeus's house stood there, and the Hermes standing east of the shrine bears the name Hermes-by-Aegeus's-Gate.
The Pallantidae had earlier hoped to hold the kingship themselves once Aegeus, being childless, should die; but when Theseus was proclaimed his successor, they took it hard that Aegeus — himself only adopted by Pandion and having no kinship at all with the Erechtheidae — should be king, while Theseus in turn, a newcomer and a foreigner, should be king after him; and they set themselves to war.
Dividing themselves, some marched openly from Sphettus against the city with their father, while the others, from Gargettus, hid themselves and lay in ambush, meaning to fall upon their opponents from two sides at once. Among them was a herald, a certain Leos from the deme of Hagnus. This man reported to Theseus what the Pallantidae had planned.
Theseus, falling suddenly upon those lying in ambush, destroyed them all. Those with Pallas, learning of it, scattered. From this, they say, arose the rule that the deme of Pallene may not intermarry with that of Hagnus, nor may the local herald's cry "Hear ye, people!" be proclaimed among them — for they hate that word because of the man's treachery.
Theseus, wishing to be active and at the same time to court the favor of the people, went out against the bull of Marathon, which was causing no small trouble to the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis; and having mastered it, he paraded it alive across the city before offering it up as a sacrifice to Apollo Delphinius.
As for Hecale and the story told about her — the hospitality and reception she gave him — it seems not wholly lacking in truth. For the surrounding demes used to gather and offer sacrifice at the Hecalesia to Zeus Hecalus, and they honored Hecale, calling her by the affectionate diminutive Hecaline, because she too, in receiving Theseus, who was then quite young, greeted and made much of him in an old woman's way, with such endearments.
And since she had vowed to Zeus on his behalf, as he set out for the fight, that she would sacrifice if he returned safe, but died before he came back, she received the recompense described at Theseus's own command, as Philochorus has recorded.
A little later, for the third occasion, envoys arrived from Crete to gather the tribute. Now as to the fact that when Androgeos was thought to have died by treachery in Attic territory, Minos, waging war, inflicted many evils upon the people, and the divine power ravaged the land besides (for great barrenness and pestilence fell upon it, and the rivers dried up), and that when the god commanded that if they propitiated Minos and were reconciled to him the wrath would relax and their misfortunes would finally cease, they sent heralds and, after entreaty, made a compact to send, once every nine years, seven young men together with an equal number of maidens as tribute — on this most of the historians agree.
As for the children carried off to Crete, the most tragic version of the story declares that the Minotaur destroyed them in the Labyrinth, or else that they wandered there, unable to find the way out, and died in that place, and that the Minotaur, in Euripides's phrase, was a hybrid, monstrous being, and 'of double form, of bull and man commingled.'
Philochorus says that the Cretans do not agree with this account, but say instead that the Labyrinth was nothing but a prison, holding no evil except that those guarded there could not escape, and that Minos held a gymnastic contest in honor of Androgeos, and gave the children as prizes to the victors, they being kept meanwhile under guard in the Labyrinth; and that the man who won the earlier contests, the one who held the greatest power at that time and served as general, a man named Taurus, was harsh and ungentle in character, and treated the Athenian children arrogantly and cruelly.
Aristotle himself, too, in his Constitution of the Bottiaeans, plainly does not believe that the children were killed by Minos, but that they lived out their lives as servants in Crete; and that once, when the Cretans were paying an old vow by sending a firstfruits-offering of men to Delphi, the descendants of those children were mingled among those sent and went out along with them; and that, finding they could not make a living in that place, they crossed the sea to Italy first and settled around Iapygia, then were carried onward from there to Thrace, where they were called Bottiaeans; and that for this reason the maidens of the Bottiaeans, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing, 'Let us go to Athens.' For it seems truly a hard thing to be hated by a city that has a voice and a Muse.
For Minos was continually spoken ill of and reviled in the theaters of Attica, and neither Hesiod's calling him 'most kingly' nor Homer's calling him 'the confidant of Zeus' did him any good, but the tragedians prevailed and poured down much disrepute upon him from the stage, portraying him as harsh and violent. And yet the tradition holds that Minos ruled as a king and gave laws, and that Rhadamanthus served as judge, upholding the just decrees Minos had established.
When the time for the third tribute arrived, and the fathers who had unmarried sons had to present them for the lot, accusations again sprang up against Aegeus among the citizens, who lamented and were indignant that he, though the cause of all their troubles, bore none of the penalty himself, but having fixed the succession on an illegitimate, foreign-born son looked on while they were stripped of their own lawful children and left childless.
This distressed Theseus, and thinking it right not to overlook it but to share the citizens' fortune, he came forward and offered himself without a lot being cast. To the rest his high-mindedness appeared admirable, and they were delighted with his love of the people; but Aegeus, when his entreaties and supplications found him unmoved and unshaken, cast lots for the remaining children.
Hellanicus, however, says that it was not those chosen by lot whom the city sent out, but that Minos himself came and made the selection, and chose Theseus first of all, on the terms established; and that under the terms agreed, Athens was to supply the vessel, the youths sailing with him were to carry no arms whatsoever, and the moment the Minotaur died the whole penalty would be discharged.
Now before this time no hope of safety had ever been entertained; and so they used to send the ship with a black sail, as for a disaster foreknown. But this time, since Theseus was encouraging his father and speaking boldly of how he would master the Minotaur, Aegeus gave the helmsman a second sail, a white one, ordering him to raise the white one on the return voyage if Theseus survived, and otherwise to fly the black, marking out the calamity.
Simonides, however, holds that Aegeus gave him not a white sail but 'a crimson sail dyed with the juice of the luxuriant scarlet-oak's flower,' and that this served as the sign marking their safe return. And the ship, according to Simonides, was steered by Phereclus son of Amarsyas.
Philochorus says that Theseus received from Scirus of Salamis a helmsman named Nausithous and a lookout named Phaeax, the Athenians not yet at that time being given to seafaring, and that one of the young men, Menesthes, was a grandson of Scirus on his daughter's side. Witness to this is given by the shrines of Nausithous and Phaeax, which Theseus set up at Phalerum next to the sanctuary of Scirus, and it is said that the festival called the Cybernesia is celebrated in their honor.
When the lot had been cast, Theseus took those chosen from the Prytaneum, went to the Delphinium, and laid down for them there the suppliant's branch for Apollo — a branch from the sacred olive, wreathed with white wool. Having prayed, he made his way down to the shore, choosing the Munychion month's sixth day, its earliest days, which remains to this day the date when the maidens are still sent to propitiate the god at the Delphinium.
It is said that the god at Delphi told him to take Aphrodite as his guide and to invite her as a fellow traveler, and that as he sacrificed the she-goat by the sea, it turned of its own accord into a he-goat; for which reason the goddess is called Epitragia.
When he had sailed to Crete, as most writers record and as the songs tell it, Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him the thread; guided by her instructions on threading the Labyrinth's winding passages, he killed the Minotaur and sailed away, taking with him Ariadne and the young men. Pherecydes says that Theseus also broke open the hulls of the Cretan ships, to deprive them of the means of pursuit.
Demon says that Minos's general Taurus died in a naval battle within the harbor just as Theseus was putting out to sea. Philochorus, on the other hand, records it differently: when Minos was holding the games, Taurus, expected once more to sweep every contest as he had before, drew envy; for his power was oppressive because of his character, and he was under suspicion of being too intimate with Pasiphaë. For this reason, when Theseus asked to compete, Minos granted it.
As Cretan custom permitted women to attend the games too, Ariadne, being present, was struck with amazement at the sight of Theseus and admired his prowess when he overcame all his opponents. And Minos too was delighted, above all at seeing Taurus thrown down and disgraced, so he restored the children to Theseus and released the city from its tribute.
Cleidemus, however, has reported these matters in his own peculiar and elaborate way, beginning far back, saying that it was a common decree of the Greeks that no trireme should sail from anywhere carrying more than five men, the sole exception being Jason, commander of the Argo, who sailed about clearing the sea of pirates. When Daedalus fled by ship to Athens, Minos, pursuing him with warships in violation of the decree, was driven by a storm to Sicily and there ended his life.
When Deucalion, his son, being hostile toward the Athenians, sent word demanding that they surrender Daedalus to him, and threatening otherwise to kill the boys whom Minos had taken as hostages, Theseus answered him mildly, begging off on Daedalus's behalf, since Daedalus was his own cousin and kin to him as well, being the son of Merope daughter of Erechtheus; and he himself began building a fleet, part of it there at Thymoetadae, far from the road foreigners used, and part through Pittheus at Troezen,
wishing to keep it secret. When his ships were ready he sailed out, taking Daedalus and Cretan exiles as his guides; and since no one had any warning, but the Cretans supposed the ships approaching to be friendly, he seized the harbor and, disembarking, got to Knossos before word could spread; and joining battle at the gates of the Labyrinth, he killed Deucalion and his bodyguard.
Since Ariadne now had a hand in affairs, he made a treaty with her, took back the young men, and forged a bond of friendship joining Athens and Crete, whose people swore never to begin a war.
Many other stories are still told about these matters and about Ariadne, and they agree in nothing. Some say that she hanged herself after being abandoned by Theseus; others, that sailors carried her to Naxos where she lived with Oenarus, priest of Dionysus, and that Theseus left her because his heart belonged to someone else — 'for a terrible love for Aegle, daughter of Panopeus, wore him down.'
For this verse, Hereas of Megara says, was struck out of Hesiod's poems by Peisistratus, just as, conversely, he says, the line 'Theseus and Pirithous, glorious children of the gods' was inserted into Homer's Nekyia to gratify the Athenians. Some also say that Ariadne bore Theseus two sons, Staphylus and Oenopion; Ion of Chios is one authority for this, and in describing his native island he says 'which Oenopion, son of Theseus, founded in ages past.' But as for the most reverent version of these legends, nearly everyone has it by heart. Paeon of Amathus, however, has published his own particular account of these matters.
He says that Theseus, driven by a storm to Cyprus, and having Ariadne with him pregnant and in a bad way from the tossing of the sea and finding it hard to bear, put her ashore alone, while he himself, going to help the ship, was carried back out to sea away from the land. The women of the country then took Ariadne in and cared for her in her despondency at being left alone, and brought her forged letters as though written to her by Theseus, and helped and assisted her through her labor pains; and when she died without giving birth, they buried her.
Theseus, on returning and finding himself overcome with grief, left money with the people of the country, arranging that they should sacrifice to Ariadne, and had two small statuettes set up, one of silver, one of bronze. And at the sacrifice, held on Gorpiaeus's second day, a young man lies down, cries out, and mimics a woman in labor; and the grove where her tomb is shown to visitors bears the name of the Amathusian Aphrodite Ariadne.
Some of the Naxians give a version peculiar to themselves, holding that there had actually been a pair of Minoses and a pair of Ariadnes; the elder Ariadne, on this account, was wedded to Dionysus on Naxos and became mother to Staphylus and his brothers, whereas the younger woman was seized by Theseus, and, once left behind, arrived at Naxos accompanied by a nurse called Corcyne, whose tomb can be seen there still. This Ariadne, they say, died there too, and receives honors not like those given to the first. For the earlier one is celebrated with joy and revelry, but the sacrifices performed for this one are mixed with a certain mourning and gloom.
Setting out from Crete, he made land at Delos; there, once he had offered sacrifice to the god and set up as an offering the statue of Aphrodite given him by Ariadne, he led the young men in a dance that the Delians claim they still perform even now, one that mimicked the twists and turnings of the Labyrinth, done to a fixed rhythm made up of turns answered by counter-turns.
This kind of dance is called by the Delians the crane, as Dicaearchus records. He danced it around the altar called Keraton, which is built up entirely of horns taken from the left side. They say he also instituted a contest at Delos, and that it was he who first gave a palm branch to the victors.
As they neared Attica, both Theseus and the helmsman, overcome with gladness, neglected to hoist the sail that was meant to signal their safe return to Aegeus; and Aegeus, overwhelmed with grief, cast himself down from the cliff to his death. But once Theseus had brought the ship to land, he first carried out, at Phalerum, the offerings he had pledged to the gods before departing, and only then dispatched a herald into the city to bring word that they had come home unharmed.
This man encountered many who were lamenting the king's death, and others, as one would expect, who were rejoicing, eager to greet him kindly and to crown him for their safe deliverance. He accepted the crowns, but wreathed his herald's staff with them instead; and returning to the sea, since Theseus had not yet finished making his libations, he waited outside, unwilling to disturb the sacrifice.
When the libations were complete, he announced the death of Aegeus. And they, with weeping and uproar, hurried up into the city. Hence even now at the Oschophoria, they say, it is not the herald who is crowned but the herald's staff, and those present cry out during the libations, "Eleleu, iou, iou" — the first of which they are accustomed to shout when hurrying along in a paean, the second belonging to consternation and confusion.
After his father's burial, he discharged the vow made to Apollo, doing so on Pyanepsion's seventh day, since that was the very day their ascent to the city had taken place. The boiling of pulses is said to take place because those who were saved gathered together the remains of their food and, boiling them all in one common pot, feasted together and ate of the same food.
They carry out the eiresione, a branch of olive wound about with wool, just as the suppliant-branch was then, laden with all sorts of first-fruits because the famine had come to an end, singing as they go: "Eiresione brings figs and rich loaves, and honey in a cup, and oil to rub down with, and a strong cup of wine, that one may go to sleep drunk." And yet some say these rites belong to the Heraclids, who were thus supported by the Athenians; but the majority say what has been stated above.
The thirty-oared ship on which Theseus had sailed with the youths and made his return, the Athenians kept in existence all the way down to Demetrius of Phalerum's day; they would take away whichever planks had decayed and replace them with sound new timber, joining the pieces so skillfully that the vessel turned into a stock illustration for philosophers arguing over the puzzle of growth and identity, with some maintaining it stayed one and the same ship and others insisting it did not.
They also hold the festival of the Oschophoria, established by Theseus. For he did not lead out all the maidens who had been chosen by lot at that time, but instead picked two young men of his acquaintance who were girlish in appearance but young, yet manly in spirit and eager, and by warm baths and shade-rearing and by anointing and adorning their hair, complexion, and skin, transformed them entirely, and taught them to imitate as far as possible in voice, bearing, and gait the likeness of maidens, so that they seemed no different at all; he then inserted them among the number of the maidens and they went entirely unnoticed. And when he returned,
he himself led the procession, and the young men marched dressed just as those who now carry the vine-branches are dressed. They carry them in honor of Dionysus and Ariadne, because of the story, or rather because they returned at the time when the fruit harvest was being gathered in. And the dinner-carrying women take part and join in the sacrifice, imitating the mothers of those who had been chosen by lot; for these mothers used to visit their children bringing them food and delicacies; and stories are told because those women, for the sake of cheer and comfort, used to tell stories to their children. These things Demon has recorded. A precinct was also set apart for him, and he ordained that those from the houses that had furnished the tribute should pay contributions for a sacrifice to him; and the Phytalidae had charge of the sacrifice, Theseus having granted them this in return for their hospitality.
After the death of Aegeus, conceiving a great and marvelous project, he brought together into one city all those who dwelt in Attica, and made them a single people of a single city, whereas before they had been scattered about and difficult to summon together for the common good of all, and were even, at times, at variance and at war with one another.
He went from group to group, deme by deme and clan by clan, urging his proposal on them; the common folk and the poor gave their consent at once, while for the powerful he painted a picture of rule without kings, a democratic order in which he alone would hold the roles of war-leader and protector of the law, leaving everyone else an equal portion.
Some agreed to these conditions; as for the rest, wary already of how formidable he had become and of his daring nature, they preferred consenting willingly to being forced into it. He therefore did away with the separate council-chambers, town-halls, and offices that belonged to each community, replacing them with a single shared town-hall and council-house on the site the city now occupies, gave the city the name Athens, and founded the Panathenaea as a sacrifice open to all.
He also sacrificed the Metoikia on the sixteenth of Hecatombaeon, which they still sacrifice to this day. And laying down his kingship, just as he had agreed, he set the constitution in order, beginning with the gods; for an oracle had come to him from Delphi when he consulted it concerning the city:
"Son of Aegeus, offspring of Pittheus' daughter, my father has set within many cities the bounds and threads of destiny, in your city too. But you must not grieve too much within your heart with troubles: for a wineskin will make its way over the swelling sea." And they say that later the Sibyl too spoke this same oracle to the city, crying out: "You are dipped like a wineskin: it is not fated for you to sink."
Wishing to increase the city still further, he invited all to come on equal terms, and the proclamation "Come hither, all you people" is said to have been made by Theseus, as he established a kind of general gathering of the population. Yet he did not allow the resulting democracy to become disordered or confused through the mass of people poured in without discrimination, but was the first to divide the people, apart from one another, into nobles, farmers, and craftsmen,
granting to the nobles the office of knowing sacred matters and providing magistrates, and being teachers of the laws and interpreters of things sacred and profane, while he set the other citizens on an equal footing with them in a sense, since the nobles seemed to excel in reputation, the farmers in usefulness, and the craftsmen in numbers. That he was the first to incline toward the common people, as Aristotle says, and gave up sole rule, Homer too seems to bear witness, in the Catalogue of Ships calling the Athenians alone "the people."
He also struck a coinage, stamping it with an ox, either because of the bull of Marathon, or because of Minos's general, or to encourage his citizens toward farming. From this, they say, the terms "hecatomboion" and "dekaboion" derive their names. Having securely added the Megarid to Attica, he set up the celebrated pillar on the Isthmus, inscribing on it the epigram that marked the boundary of the land in two trimeters, of which one, facing east, declared: "This is not the Peloponnese, but Ionia"; and the other, facing west: "This is the Peloponnese, not Ionia."
And he was the first to institute the games, in emulation of Heracles, being ambitious that just as the Greeks held the Olympic games for Zeus because of Heracles, so too because of himself they should hold the Isthmian games for Poseidon. For the games established there in honor of Melicertes had been conducted at night, having more the character of a mystic rite than of a spectacle and festival gathering. But some say the Isthmian games were established in honor of Sciron, Theseus performing an act of atonement for his killing because of their kinship, Sciron being the son of Canethus and Henioche, daughter of Pittheus. Others say it was for Sinis,
not Sciron, and that it was on his account, not the other's, that the games were established by Theseus. He also arranged and stipulated with the Corinthians that the Athenians who came to the Isthmian games should be given a place of honor covering as much ground as could be covered when the sail of the sacred embassy-ship was spread out, as Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus have recorded.
He also sailed into the Euxine Sea, according to Philochorus and certain others, joining Heracles in his campaign against the Amazons, and receiving Antiope as his prize; but most writers—among them Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodorus—hold instead that Theseus made a separate voyage of his own afterward, without Heracles, and seized the Amazon himself; this version carries more weight. For no one else among those who campaigned with him is recorded as having taken an Amazon captive.
Bion says that he tricked her and made off with her, taking her by deceit; for the Amazons, being by nature fond of men, neither fled from Theseus when he attacked their land, but even sent him gifts of hospitality; and that he invited the woman bringing them to come aboard the ship, and when she had come aboard, he put out to sea. But a certain Menecrates, who has published a history concerning Nicaea, the city in Bithynia, says that Theseus, having Antiope with him, spent time in that region,
and that there happened to be serving with him three young men from Athens, brothers of one another, Euneos, Thoas, and Soloeis. This last one, being in love with Antiope and hiding it from the others, revealed it to one of his companions; and this man, having spoken with Antiope about the matter, found her firmly rejecting the attempt, but she bore the whole affair with both discretion and gentleness, and did not accuse him to Theseus.
But when Soloeis, unable to bear it, flung himself into a river and died, Theseus, on learning afterward the reason and what the young man had gone through, was deeply troubled, and in his grief he remembered an oracle he had once received at Delphi: the Pythia had told him that at whatever moment abroad he felt greatest anguish and heaviest sorrow, he was to establish a city on that spot and leave some of his followers there to lead it. Out of this came the city
which he founded, he named Pythopolis after the god, and the nearby river Soloeis in honor of the young man. He also left behind the young man's brothers as overseers and lawgivers, and with them Hermus, a man of the Athenian nobility; from whom the people of Pythopolis take the name of a certain spot they call "the house of Hermus"—wrongly placing the accent on the second syllable and thereby shifting the credit from a hero to a god.
This, then, was the pretext for the war with the Amazons; but it appears that the affair was not a trivial or womanish one. For they would not have encamped within the city itself, nor joined battle at close quarters near the Pnyx and the Museum, unless, having already gained control of the surrounding country, they had approached the city without fear.
As for Hellanicus's claim that the Amazons crossed the frozen Cimmerian Bosporus and circled around, that is hard to credit; yet that they made camp almost inside the city walls finds support in both the place-names that survive and the tombs of the fallen. For a long stretch both sides held back, reluctant to engage; but Theseus, at last following a particular oracle, made an offering to Fear and brought on the fight.
The battle took place in the month of Boedromion, on which day the Athenians to this day sacrifice the Boedromia. Cleidemus, wanting to set down every detail with precision, writes that on the Amazon side the left flank reached toward the spot now known as the Amazoneum, while their right came up near the Pnyx by the Chrysa. It was against that flank, he reports, that the Athenians launched their assault, meeting the Amazons in battle from the direction of the Museum, and that the fallen were buried along the broad street running to the gates by Chalcodon's shrine, a street now called the Piraic.
And at this point, he says, the Athenians were driven back all the way to the sanctuary of the Eumenides and yielded ground before the women, but a counterattack coming from the Palladium, the Ardettus, and the Lyceum drove the enemy's right flank back to their own camp, cutting many of them down. By the fourth month a truce had been arranged through Hippolyta; this author, that is, gives the name Hippolyta rather than Antiope to the woman who shared Theseus's life. Other accounts, however, hold that she died in the fighting at Theseus's side, cut down by a spear cast by Molpadia, and that the column set beside the shrine of Olympian Zeus commemorates her.
Nor is it surprising that, in matters so ancient, the historical record should wander, since they even say that the wounded among the Amazons were secretly sent off by Antiope to Chalcis for treatment, and that some of them were laid to rest nearby, in the spot people today call the Amazoneum. Yet proof that hostilities were settled by a formal agreement can be found both in the name given the ground next to Theseus's shrine, the Horcomosium, and in the offering once made to the Amazons ahead of the Theseia.
The Megarians too show a burial place of the Amazons among themselves, as one walks toward the place called Rhus from the marketplace, where the Rhomboid stands. It is also said that others of them died near Chaeronea and were buried beside the little stream which, it seems, was formerly called Thermodon but is now called Haemon; concerning these things it has been written in the Life of Demosthenes. Nor does it appear that the Amazons passed through Thessaly without incident either: for their graves are still shown even now around Scotussa and the Dog's Heads.
These things, then, are worth recording concerning the Amazons. For the uprising of the Amazons which the poet of the Theseid has written, in which Antiope attacks Theseus as he is marrying Phaedra, and the Amazons with her defend themselves, and Heracles kills them, plainly appears to be myth and invention.
After Antiope died, he married Phaedra, though he already had a son, Hippolytus, by Antiope, or as Pindar says, Demophon. As for the misfortunes concerning her and his son, since nothing in the historians contradicts the tragedians, we must suppose these to have happened just as all the tragedians have represented them.
There are, however, other stories about Theseus's marriages that have escaped the stage, having neither honorable beginnings nor happy endings. For it is said that he carried off a certain Anaxo of Troezen, and that after killing Sinis and Cercyon he lay with their daughters by force; that he took Periboea as well — Ajax's mother — to wife, and afterward Phereboea,
and Iope, daughter of Iphicles; and that because of his passion for Aegle, daughter of Panopeus, he abandoned Ariadne, as has been said, in a way neither noble nor fitting; and finally, that his abduction of Helen filled Attica with war and ended for him in exile and destruction — of which a little will be said shortly.
Since many contests for the noblest men took place at that time, Herodorus supposes that Theseus took part in none of them except that he alone shared in the Lapiths' war against the Centaurs; others say he was also with Jason among the Colchians and helped Meleager kill the boar, and that this is the origin of the saying "no deed without Theseus" — meaning that he, requiring no partner, achieved many noble feats on his own, so that people came to call him "a second Heracles."
He also helped Adrastus recover the bodies of those who had fallen beneath the walls of Cadmeia, not, as Euripides represents in his tragedy, by defeating the Thebans in battle, but by persuasion and a treaty — for so most say; Philochorus says these were in fact the first truces ever made for the recovery of the dead.
The claim that Heracles first restored fallen enemies for burial appears in the narrative devoted to Heracles. The graves of the common soldiers are shown at Eleutherae, those of the leaders near Eleusis, this too being a favor of Theseus to Adrastus. The Eleusinians of Aeschylus bear this out against the Suppliants of Euripides, in which Theseus is made to say these very things.
They say his friendship with Pirithous came about in this way. Theseus had the greatest reputation for strength and courage; wishing to test him and put him to proof, Pirithous drove off some cattle of his from Marathon, and on learning that Theseus, armed, had set out after him, he did not run away but wheeled around and advanced to face him.
But when each saw the other, and each admired the other's beauty and marveled at his boldness, they held back from fighting; Pirithous, stretching out his right hand first, bade Theseus himself be judge of the cattle-raid, saying he would willingly submit to whatever penalty he might set; but Theseus both released him from the penalty and invited him to be his friend and ally; and they made their friendship binding by oath.
After this, when Pirithous was marrying Deidameia, he asked Theseus to come and see the country and meet the Lapiths. He happened also to have invited the Centaurs to the feast. When these, in their wanton drunkenness, would not keep their hands off the women, the Lapiths turned to defend themselves: some of the Centaurs they killed outright, and the rest, defeating them later in war, they drove out of the country, Theseus fighting alongside them and sharing in the war.
Herodorus, however, says this did not happen so, but that Theseus arrived to help the Lapiths only after the war had already begun, and that it was then, for the first time, that he came to know Heracles by sight, having made a point of meeting him near Trachis, where Heracles had already ceased from his wanderings and his labors; and that the meeting between them was marked by honor, warmth, and much mutual praise.
Still, one should rather give heed to those who record that the two met many times: that Theseus, out of eagerness, arranged for Heracles's initiation into the Mysteries, and also the purification that had to precede the initiation, since Heracles needed it on account of certain unwilled deeds.
Being now fifty years old, as Hellanicus says, he carried out the affair concerning Helen, a deed unbecoming his years. Hence, as though correcting what was thought the gravest of the charges against him, some say it was not he who carried off Helen, but that Idas and Lynceus carried her off and gave her to him to guard as a trust, whom he refused to surrender when the Dioscuri came demanding her back; or else, by Zeus, that Tyndareus himself entrusted her to him, out of fear that Enarsphorus, son of Hippocoon, would take Helen by force while she was still a child. But the most plausible account, and the one supported by most witnesses, is this:
Both of them went to Sparta, and having seized the girl as she danced in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, they fled with her; and since those sent in pursuit followed no farther than Tegea, once they were safe, having passed through the Peloponnese, they made an agreement: whichever of them won her by lot should have Helen as wife, but each would help the other win a different marriage.
On these terms they cast lots, and Theseus won. He took the girl, who was not yet of marriageable age, and brought her to Aphidnae; and having installed her mother along with her, he entrusted them to Aphidnus, who was his friend, charging him to guard them and to keep them hidden from everyone else.
Theseus himself, repaying Pirithous the favor, went abroad with him to Epirus after the daughter of Aidoneus, king of the Molossians, who had named his wife Persephone, his daughter Kore, and his dog Cerberus, and proclaimed that whoever wished to woo his daughter must fight the dog, and that whoever won should have her. But learning that Pirithous and his companions had come not as suitors but to carry her off by force, he seized them: Pirithous he destroyed at once by setting the dog upon him, while Theseus he held bound in captivity.
During this time Menestheus, son of Peteos, son of Orneus, son of Erechtheus, the first man, they say, to take up demagoguery and to speak for the pleasure of the crowd, worked to rouse and organize the powerful men, who had long resented Theseus, believing he had stripped each of the noble families of his rule and kingship over his own people, and had herded them all together into a single city to be used as subjects and slaves; and he stirred up and slandered the common people too, telling them that they were looking at a mere dream of freedom, while in fact they had been robbed of their homelands and their shrines, so that in place of the many worthy kings who shared their own blood, they now had to look to a single ruler who was both an outsider and a stranger to them.
While Menestheus was busy with these schemes, the war added a great impetus to his revolutionary designs, when the sons of Tyndareus invaded; and some say the invasion happened entirely at his urging. At first they did no wrong, but simply demanded back their sister. When the townspeople replied that she was not in their hands and that they had no idea where she had been hidden, the two sides went to war.
Academus, however, having somehow learned of it, told them of her concealment at Aphidnae. For this, he received honors from the sons of Tyndareus while he lived, and afterward, whenever the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica and laid waste the whole country, out of regard for Academus they left the Academy untouched.
Dicaearchus says that Echedemus and Marathus, who were then campaigning with the sons of Tyndareus from Arcadia, gave their names respectively to what is now called the Academy, once called Echedemia, and to the deme of Marathon, Marathus having offered himself willingly, in accordance with an oracle, to be sacrificed before the battle line. So they came to Aphidnae, and, winning by battle, took the place.
There, they say, fell also Alycus, son of Sciron, who was then campaigning with the Dioscuri, from whom a place in the Megarid is called Alycus, since his body was buried there. But Hereas records that Alycus was killed by Theseus himself near Aphidnae, and offers as evidence these verses about Alycus: "him who once fought in wide-spaced Aphidnae, Theseus slew, for fair-haired Helen's sake." Yet it is not likely that, with Theseus himself present, his mother and Aphidnae would have been captured.
In any case, once Aphidnae had fallen, and the people in the city were afraid, Menestheus persuaded the people to admit the sons of Tyndareus into the city and treat them kindly, since they were making war only on Theseus, who alone had wronged them, while to everyone else they were benefactors and saviors of mankind. And their own conduct bore this out: for although complete masters of everything, they asked for nothing except to be initiated into the Mysteries, since they belonged to the city no less than Heracles did.
This too was granted them, Aphidnus adopting them as his sons, just as Pylius had adopted Heracles; and they received honors equal to the gods, being called Anakes, either because of the truce that was made, or because of their care and concern that no one should suffer harm while so great an army was within the city — for the Athenians use the phrase "to keep anakos," of those who watch over or guard anything; and perhaps for this reason kings too are called anaktes. But there are those who say they were named Anakes because of the appearing of the stars, since the Attic people call "up" anekas, and "from of old" anekathen.
They say that Aethra, Theseus's mother, was taken captive and carried off to Lacedaemon, and afterward to Troy in Helen's company; Homer, it is claimed, confirms this when he says she attended Helen: "Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, and ox-eyed Clymene." Some, however, dispute this verse as well as the whole legend about Munychus, whom they say Laodice, having secretly borne him to Demophon, gave to Aethra to raise together with herself at Troy.
In book thirteen of his Attic History, Ister offers a strange and quite different version of the Aethra story, according to which some say that Alexander, that is Paris, suffered defeat in combat against Achilles and Patroclus near the Spercheius river in Thessaly, and that Hector, after capturing the city of Troezen, sacked it and carried off Aethra, who had been left behind there. But this account contains a great deal of improbability.
When Aidoneus the Molossian was entertaining Heracles, and by chance mentioned the affair of Theseus and Pirithous — what they had come intending to do, and what they had suffered on being found out — Heracles took it hard, that the one had perished so ignobly, and the other was still perishing. About Pirithous he thought there was nothing more he could do by protesting, but for Theseus he pleaded, and asked that this favor be granted him.
Aidoneus consented, and Theseus, once freed, returned to Athens, where his friends had not yet been entirely overpowered, and consecrated to Heracles all the precincts that had previously belonged to him from the city, renaming them Heraclea instead of Theseia, except for four, as Philochorus records. Then, wishing once more to rule and lead the government as before, he fell into factions and disturbances: those who had abandoned him he found now hating him, having added contempt to their hatred since they no longer feared him, while among the people he saw much corruption, wanting to be flattered rather than to do what was commanded of them in silence.
So when he tried to use force he was outmaneuvered by demagogues and factions. In the end, despairing of affairs, he sent his sons away secretly to Euboea, to Elephenor, son of Chalcodon, while he himself, at Gargettus, laid curses upon the Athenians — the place is still called the Araterion — and sailed off to Scyros, believing he had friends there and ancestral lands on the island. Lycomedes was then king of the Scyrians.
Coming to him, Theseus sought to recover his fields, intending to settle there; but some say he asked Lycomedes to help him against the Athenians. Lycomedes, either fearing the man's reputation or wishing to please Menestheus, led him up to the heights of the country, as if to show him the fields from there, and pushed him off the rocks and killed him. Some say he fell of his own accord, having stumbled after dinner,
while walking, as was his habit. At first no one paid any attention to his death, and Menestheus ruled as king of the Athenians, while his sons, living as private citizens, campaigned with Elephenor to Troy. There, when Menestheus died, they returned and recovered the kingship. Long afterward, various events led the Athenians to honor Theseus as a hero, and not a few of those fighting the Medes at Marathon thought they saw the apparition of Theseus in arms, charging ahead of them against the barbarians.
After the Persian Wars, in the archonship of Phaedon, the Athenians, consulting the oracle, were told by the Pythia to recover the bones of Theseus and, placing them with honor, to keep them among themselves. But it was difficult even to obtain them and to learn the location of the grave, because of the inhospitality and harshness of the Dolopians who inhabited the island. Nevertheless, Cimon, having taken the island, as is written in the account concerning him, and being eager to find the grave, noticed by some divine chance a mound-like place where an eagle was pecking with its beak and tearing at it with its talons, and, understanding the sign, dug it up.
There was found a coffin containing a body of great size, with a bronze spear-point and a sword lying beside it. When these were brought back by Cimon on his trireme, the delighted Athenians welcomed them with lavish processions and offerings, as if Theseus in person were coming home to the city. He now rests at the city's center, close to the gymnasium that stands there today, and the spot serves as a refuge for slaves and all the lowly who fear those stronger than themselves, since Theseus in his lifetime was a protector and a helper, and welcomed with kindness the pleas of the humble.
They offer him the greatest sacrifice on the eighth of Pyanepsion, the day on which he returned from Crete with the youths. But they also honor him on the other eighth days of the month, either because he first arrived from Troezen on the eighth of Hecatombaion, as Diodorus the Topographer records, or because they think this number belongs to him more fittingly than to any other, since he is said to be the son of Poseidon.
For indeed they honor Poseidon on the eighth days too. For the number eight, being the first cube from an even number, and twice the first square, has an affinity with what is stable and hard to move, which belongs to the power of the god whom we call the Securer and the Earth-Holder.